Most of the downs used for making conventional down products are comprised of down and feather, wherein down is a feather fiber excluding any feather shafts and primary used as a thermal insulating material, and feather is a small feather containing feather shafts for providing a fluffy effect to the down. In summation, the down products containing both down and feather have the light, soft and warm features.
In addition, the small feather used in the down products primarily includes waterbird feathers (duck and goose feathers) with a length below 6 cm. Since duck and goose feathers are not of the same length and their length varies from 1 cm to 15 cm, therefore the duck and goose feather waste with the length below 6 cm has no economic value to down manufacturers anymore, and the quantity of such feather waste is huge. Manufacturers may produce feather powder from these feather wastes by hydrolysis, and the feather powder may be used as feed or fertilizer. However, the duck and goose feathers are full of keratin and disulfide bonds, and if the feather waste has not been hydrolyzed completely, the feed so produced cannot be digested by animals. Therefore, the duck and goose feather waste is a burden to down manufacturers, regardless of its disposal or reuse.
In view of the aforementioned problems and based on the basic biomaterial researches related to the application of degenerating and reconstructing feather and hair materials and conducted in the last century, finding a method of reusing the duck and goose feather waste and manufacturing a by-product to improve the economic benefit has been a long-standing issue to down manufacturers.